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A Lack Of Cryptocurrency Education Is Damaging the Industry

Last week, The Mirror (UK) published some findings about public perceptions of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

The article, titles ‘Over a THIRD of Brits think that ‘cryptocurrency’ refers to funeral finance’ offers insight into how the British public are perceiving the blockchain revolution.

The Mirror teamed up with intY a cloud service distributer to review public opinions about common words and phrases that one might find in a cryptocurrency encyclopaedia. The survey sampled 2,000 British people and was composed of 20 questions.

Some of the findings include:

25% of respondents thought HTML stood for ‘Hi There My Love’
38% of respondents thought cloud computing related to using technology whilst flying
36% of respondents thought that cryptocurrency referred to funeral finance
41% of respondents thought that a blockchain was something to do with a toilet

In response to their findings, intY have released a computing jargon dictionary, according to The Mirror, CEO of intY, Craig Joseph had this to say about it:

“We know the world of IT and computing can be complex, but we think our Dictionary of Computing jargon-buster might just help people struggling with a few technical words and phrases we in the industry probably take for granted.”

What do we think about this?

To be brutally honest, I can’t really call this a scientifically accurate survey, nor does the report really detail any hard evidence, instead it just brushes on some humorous perceptions of computing-jargon that the British public have apparently come up with, let’s face it though, if you asked a lay person on the street if they thought HTML stood for Hi There My Love, chances are they would agree with you, then walk off and wonder what the hell was going on.

What this might suggest though is that a poor knowledge of cryptocurrency is putting up barriers for the blockchain revolution and potential cryptocurrency adoption in the UK. If the population aren’t familiar with even the basic language behind cryptocurrency then how can we expect them to use it in every day life? If nobody understood how the pound worked, then nobody could spend any money in the UK could they?

Creations like the intY computing dictionary are a step in the right direction, but sceptics will actively avoid reading it because they don’t want to be caught up in the uncertainty that cryptocurrency is said to bring. Overall, we need to provide a more transparent education system that sets out, in plain terms how cryptocurrency works. It needs to be delivered in a format that allows people to understand cryptocurrency and get first hand experience of it, otherwise when it comes to the crunch, the population will always settle with the sovereign currency that they already know over choosing to opt into the blockchain.